So I know I’ve mentioned my Amazingly Awesome Boyfriend and how amazing and awesome I think he is. He is a hard-working, dedicated man who works a very physically demanding job but still comes home and mows the lawn for me. For the most part, he is sweet and kind and caring and amazing at snuggling me when I’m sad or cold or scared. Of course he’s not perfect, like all of us. He has his demons and struggles he’s dealing with, and I try to support him through that the very best I can.

But sometimes, something in him just tweaks a bit, and his work rants become so hurtful and almost demeaning to me.

To start, he works 8-11 hours a day during the week, and 4-6 hours on Saturdays. He comes home filthy and tired and sore, so I voluntarily do the majority of the cleaning indoors. I also have this blog, my Tumblr blog, two or three writing projects on the go, my customer service job which is usually 30 hours (6 days) a week, and I’m taking online courses through work and sites like Coursera. This is on top of 10-20 hours a week of job hunting, resume writing, cover letter writing, and online workshops and networking events. I’m not exactly sitting around in my underpants, eating pizza and marathoning Netflix all day.

But when AAB gets upset, and work sucked, none of what I do counts.

Last night, we had a pretty decent fight about an on-going issue we’re working on. He got upset that all he wanted to do was take a shower and a poop, but I was texting him from work and he felt like he needed to reply. I told him that he should have just told me, “Look, I wanna poop and shower. We can talk about this when you get home.”

His reply?

“Well I don’t have time to sit around and analyze things and figure out the exact perfect thing to say. I don’t get to sit around on Facebook and write a stupid blog and do nothing all day………” He then went on to describe the extremely strange and dangerous job they did that day.

That really hurt though.

It hurts to think that everything I do around here, everything I do to better myself, is seen as some sort of luxurious downtime wasted on frivolities. I know he didn’t mean to hurt me, and he appreciates what I do around here. He was upset about his job, about where his life is now compared to where he wanted to be at this point in life, about the long hours and dirty environment and backbreaking labour. Sometimes he needs to feel like what he’s doing is important, more important than anything else, to help keep him going when things look bleak. And I get that.

The thing is, there are a lot of people out there like this. Too many, in fact. And they are like this more often than not. They drain your drive, crush your spirit, steal away the very essence of your being in order to make them feel all-important. I know I can go to AAB, tell him that what he said pissed me off royally, and he’ll apologize. We’ll end up curled up on the couch, all snuggled in together with the cat, talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up, where we thought our lives would be by now when we were younger, where and when we screwed it all up for ourselves. And he’ll be genuinely sorry that he hurt me, because I feel the same thing he does.

So if you have someone in your life that gets you down like this Sunshine, someone who has to ruin you to build themselves up constantly, tell them. Tell them you’re not going to take that from them, that what they’re doing is pretty shitty and you won’t tolerate it. And if they don’t get it, if they don’t give your a real heartfelt apology, if they don’t understand why they can’t do that to make themselves feel better, then leave. You don’t need that in your life, Sunshine.